Saliva Sampling

As part of the Sleep, Health, and Wellness Laboratory Study you will be asked to provide some saliva samples when you visit the research laboratories in the School of Psychology. The materials used to collect saliva is the Salimetrics Oral Swab. You will be asked to place a small cotton swab under your tongue for two minutes. Saliva will collect at the bottom of your mouth and will be soaked by the cotton swab. You will then place the cotton swab in a small plastic tube, which will then be placed in a freezer for analysis later.

Why Collect Saliva?

Interesting insights can be gained into how our body responds to daily stressors by examining biomarkers of stress and responsivity. For the laboratory study, we are interested in how your body responds to acute stress. In saliva, a number of biomarkers can be examined. For the Sleep, Health, and Wellness Project, we will examine levels of cortisol throughout the working day in healthy individuals and levels of salivary alpha-amylase during the laboratory study.

If you wish to get more information on saliva sample collection or salivary biomarkers of stress, see www.salimetrics.com